Pages

Saturday, 14 April 2012

IN ADORATION - Cabaret of Dread stories revealed

Artwork (c) Laurence Ranger

Every Saturday I’m revealing the tale behind the tale of Cabaret of Dread Vol.1’s main stories, together with a short excerpt of each to whet your appetite.

IN ADORATION

In Adoration is yet another unpublished story. Not for want of trying. No-one accepted it; no-one explained why they didn't want it. Sod it - I love this diabolic tale. So please take it anyway by downloading Cabaret of Dread for a pittance.

So – what’s In Adoration about?

Demons. Deities. Sex and horror. Pure and simple.

Mr Fucker is today's pseudonym of aged demon, Reuben. Reuben is bored. Reuben steals souls and has had just about enough of Seabourne's twee congregation.

Father Judas takes the demon under his twitching cassock and together they bring bloody rebirth to England's green and pleasant land.

Inspiration

I'd be a liar if I told you I remembered what inspired me to write In Adoration. What I do recall is regularly seeing a tall, creepy character leaving one of our seaside churches and lurching up towards the seafront, belching and seeming to fondle himself on the way. Dirty old bugger.

I am a very spiritual person who was expelled from Sunday School aged eight for asking "inappropriate" questions about the Gods other peoples and tribes worshipped. I have too much to say about this for this particular post but hell, demons, deities and even the devil - there are a thousand explanations - and none is right or wrong.

Excerpt

*Warning: offensive content - it is 'horror' after all.

“Excuse me
sir. Are you alright?”

The voice
breaks his reverie. He is not amused.

“I need to
get to church,” he grunts. The couple bent over him regard one another, smug in
their faith in the Lord.

“Of
course.”

He watches
the woman in her expensive print dress and pink safari jacket. Orgasm plays
between her legs in satisfaction at being such a good Samaritan.

“We’re off
to late Mass,” she says. “‘Would you like to come with us?”

Reuben
squirms within the new flesh that moulds itself across his skull; it tightens
around his throat. Believing the poor man is choking to death, the pristine
couple help him to his feet, just about tolerating the stench of his soiled
underwear.

“Our car is
right here. Wait, let me…”

The man
places a plastic-backed picnic blanket on the rear seat before strapping the
old man in. Reuben spends the journey breaking wind. His hosts open all the
windows and still they grin their evangelist smiles, clapping their hands at
the Jesus music that speaks to them through the stereo. Frustrated with the
overbearing pleasantness Reuben takes the time to vomit down his borrowed suit
at regular intervals along the journey. Sirens continue to wail in the
distance, disturbing his benefactors.

She looks
fifty, sounds sixty. Reuben gets inside her head - she is thirty-eight years
old. Her husband obeys, flipping the CD off.

“…murder at
St. Saviour’s Church, Seabourne. Brian Guilroy, lay-preacher. Husband to Maria
and father of Nigel, Constance and Belinda was found in the pews after this
morning’s early mass. It is believed the body of Mr Guilroy had been stripped
of clothing and his neck broken. Unconfirmed initial forensic reports suggest
that stab wounds were found at the base of his skull and at his groin.”

“Ha!”
Reuben barks. They don’t know the half of it.

Mr Godsquad
gasps in horror. He stares at his wife.

“Brian. Oh
shit Barb, it‘s Brian Guilroy.”

Barb glares
at him, ready to admonish him for the cuss-word. Instead, she turns in anger to
their passenger who is roaring with laughter.

“I really
don’t think this is appropriate behavior, Mr…?”

“Mr
FUCKER,” Reuben shouts.

The driver
pulls over, parking on double-yellows, much to his wife’s consternation. The
passenger feels his groin pulse with the scent of the sea, salty in his mouth -
in all their mouths. He leans forward.

He shoves
his hand between his legs and nods at the woman’s husband. “It’s what he can
never give you.”

The wife says
nothing. She stares him in the face. Disgust and revulsion don’t stop her gaze
straying to his crotch where the mound twitches, filling the old man’s
trousers. Despite herself, she flicks her own seatbelt off and reaches for him.

“Barbara.
What do you think you’re doing?”

Angry at
the interruption Reuben grabs Mr Godsquad’s fine head of hair. Yanking
backwards, he quickly snaps the man’s neck. Benevolent Barbara sneers
momentarily at her husband before crawling onto the back seat.

The
passenger declares himself ‘open’.

With Barbara choked to death between his legs, Reuben decides to take the rest of the journey on foot...

*************

Like the excerpt? The full tale is waiting for you in Cabaret of Dread! By visiting the book's 'Look Inside' feature on Amazon you can also read the opening tale DRESSING-UP BOX, a few pages of SMILING CYRUS and a handful of mini-tales.

Of course, the best way to read this - and the many other stories in Vol.1 of Cabaret of Dread, is to download it. If you do, I am ever thankful...

This just may be my favorite of the collection, Lily... you truly have made horror your 'bitch'... weaving such dark and delicious tales of man's weaknesses and perversions... lost souls spiraling down...

I should think In Adoration would make an especially fantastic bit of cinema.

Magenta Shaman

Find me on Facebook

About Lily Childs

Writer of horror and chilling fiction. Author of The House of Three - a short ghost story, Cabaret of Dread - a horror compendium, Courting Demons - a collection of dark verse and the urban fantasy Magenta Shaman short story series.
Multiple short stories published in anthologies such as The Demonologia Biblica, The Bestiarum Vocabulum, The Grimorium Verum, Bones, Fresh Fear, Thirteen, Daily Bites of Flesh, JWK Fiction Best of Horror 2013 and more.
Editor of February Femmes Fatales, a collection of dark and wicked words from twenty-three women writers.
Owner of Ganglion Press, a small platform for publishing dark fiction and crime in print and ebook formats.
Co-Editor at the former Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers ezine.